Witness for the Prosecution Review!!!
SYNOPSIS: An ill barrister takes a murder case in mid-century London in which a man is accused of killing an older, wealthier female friend. With the facts of the case nearly air tight, how can this man, Leonard Vole, prove his innocence, especially after his wife Christine takes the stand against him?
ANALYSIS: The singular problem in this adaptation of the Agatha Christie play starring Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich is it never knows what it wants to be. If the story is to be a courtroom drama, then stick to courtroom drama. If it's going to be the story of a nearly retired man taking one more case, then stick to that. And if it's going to be a parody of nurses trying to take care of obstinate patients, let it be that. Witness for the Prosecution tries to be all these things and results in being none of them.
I am a fan of courtroom stories in which the setting is intimate, the stakes are high and the participants smart. The fact we're thrust into this story using Sir Wilifrid Robarts (the barrister, or lawyer) medical condition and his well-meaning though comical nurse highlights the problem in tone. It takes a good thirty minutes to get into the courtroom and, even at that point, we outside the court for various sequences. These detours ruin the flow of the narrative. The less said about the ending, in which people cross, double cross and triple cross (possibly quadruple cross), the better. I'm not a fan of these types of endings, especially when the Leonard Vole story takes the turn it does. We, the audience, never know the full truth at the end. That's the problem.
Billy Wilder directed this picture and, frankly, it's terribly boring to look at. Inside the court, the audience sees the same angles over and over again with nothing new. Closeup on Charles Laughton as Robarts, medium shot of Power as the indignant Vole, medium shot of the judges, and so on. I'm not expecting wild sweeping crane shots for a 1957 film, but something to make the audience feel as though they are active, rather than passive, participants in the film would have helped. Recommended? Sure, but it's not another A Few Good Men, Inherit the Wind or 12 Angry Men. Those are all much superior courtroom-based dramas.